Richard Langdon ; or, Foreshadowed. (Edinburgh : Grant and Son.)—
This volume is a kind of cross between the sensation story and the novel of high life. The two elements are combined in the person of Richard Langdon, the hero, who is an intensely high-bred gentleman, and who commits one murder, and tries to accomplish another. The second title of the book appears to refer to the fact that very early in the
story the intended victim of Langdon's second attempt has a dream, which represents, with perfect accuracy, all the details of the future crime, but which in the sequel does not turn out to be in any way in- strumental in her preservation. The novel is evidently the work of an unpractised hand ; and, looked at in this light, it is not entirely
devoid of promise. Its author has some turn for the construction of sensation situations. Truth to nature is clearly not his forte ; and his fine ladies and gentlemen talk book to an extent which, fortunately, is
never met with in real life. But there is one scene in which a gentleman
goes down into an old lead-mine, in order to inspect a coffin, and while there is frightened almost out of his life by a mysterious maniac. It is true that the scene leads to nothing at all, and that the author does not vouchsafe to tell us how either the coffin or the maniac got into the mine, or why the gentleman went down it, or how he got up again': but for all that, the situation is really an effective one in its way, and the horror is piled up in a very fairly creditable manner.
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